Gray: Downtown's movie palaces just a memory

Published 4:25 pm, Thursday, December 22, 2011

BOB BAILEY
SWANKY: The Metropolitan Theater, pictured here in 1935, was one of the grandest movie houses built in downtown Houston.

BOB BAILEY
SWANKY: The Metropolitan Theater, pictured here in 1935, was one of the grandest movie houses built in downtown Houston.

Photo: BOB BAILEY

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Houston Metropolitan Research Center
WATCHING LIKE AN EGYPTIAN: The Egyptian-theme interior of the Metropolitan Theater, circa 1927.

Houston Metropolitan Research Center
WATCHING LIKE AN EGYPTIAN: The Egyptian-theme interior of the Metropolitan Theater, circa 1927.

Photo: handout book scan

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Photo: James Nielsen

Gray: Downtown's movie palaces just a memory

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On Christmas Day, I'll check to see what's playing at Sundance Cinemas' swank new Houston theater.

I like the place for a lot of reasons: its sophisticated, grown-up atmosphere, devoid of bleeping video games; its perky, funny staff; the real butter that they use on the popcorn; and the drinks menu, handwritten on a chalkboard, with specials matched to the movies screening. (For Melancholia, Sedate Me was a mixture of vodka and amaretto, with a hint of mint; for The Muppets, the scary-sounding Animal involved pink curacao, vodka and Sprite.)

But what I love most of all, really, is that the theater is downtown. Through the big glass windows in the cafe out front, you can see three of Houston's most famous buildings: the Alley, Pennzoil Place and Bank of America. You feel as though you're in the middle of the universe, out on the town, doing something special.

It's not just a movie. It's an event. You don't get that feeling at home in front of a TV screen. And you don't get it at a megaplex.

This, I think, must be a little like it used to be, going to the movies downtown.

I love Houston history for the same reason that my daughter loves Doctor Who: Because time travel is a trippy, mind-blowing experience.

And lately, I find myself circling again and again, mentally drawn, Doctor Who-like, to the old Metropolitan Theater, the grandest movie palace ever built downtown.

And yes, that actually is saying a lot. In the '20s, theater chains poured money into making their auditoriums into marvelous escapes, as astounding as the movies they showed. As Marcus Loew, the head of MGM and founder of Loew's Theaters, famously said, "We sell tickets to theaters, not movies."

Downtown Houston's "Theatre Row" was full of movie theaters, but the most amazing, everyone agreed, were the Big Three: the Majestic (1923), Loew's State (1927), and of course, the Metropolitan. You could argue that any of three was the most splendid movie theater ever built in Houston.

The Majestic, designed by John Eberson, aimed to make patrons feel that they were sitting outdoors on an Italian plaza. Electric stars twinkled in a ceiling sky in which projected clouds drifted about. A special-effect sun set as the house lights darkened before a movie.

Loew's, designed by Alfred Finn, was a Greco-Roman extravaganza, full of classical reliefs of frolicking goddesses, and outfitted with antique vases, statues and furniture. Patrons entered the lobby through polished bronze doors.

But the Metropolitan - the theater that most haunts me - was definitely the wiggiest. Jesse Jones, the most powerful man in Houston, commissioned architect Finn to go all out - to create a theater that would later be advertised as a "$2 million show-place" and "a palace of splendor."

Finn (with the help of theater expert Eberson) concocted an astonishing blend of Art Deco and Egyptomania - a stylish, over-the-top salute to King Tut, whose tomb had been discovered only a few years before.

When the 3,000-seat Metropolitan opened on Christmas Day 1926, it caused a sensation. The auditorium and lobbies were eye-popping blasts of Art Deco (zigzag tile!) and larger-than-life pseudo-Egyptian murals. A sphinx guarded the stairway leading from the foyer to the first floor. Even water fountains, flanked by golden columns and dizzying tilework, looked as if they were fit for a pharaoh.

At the end of each film, a hydraulic orchestra pit raised the live orchestra to stage level, so the musicians could continue the evening with a stage show.

The theater included a ladies' parlor, a men's smoking room and a checkroom for hats and coats. On weekdays, trained staff ran a nursery so that mothers could enjoy their movies in peace.

As late as the mid-'60s, the theaters were drawing lines that stretched around the block. But late that decade, and early the next, the bottom fell out. Downtown stopped being the center of the Houston universe, the place to be.

All three movie palaces were bulldozed in the early '70s - part of Houston's mad rush to modernize itself. For decades, the block where the Metropolitan and Loew's had stood side by side was nothing but a paved parking lot.

These days, it's 1000 Main, a skyscraper office building across the street from Main Street Square. Out front, in the middle-of-the-street fountain, a big piece of modern art declares a quote lifted from Houston's City Hall: "As we build our city, let us think that we are building forever."

That quote kills me every time. I don't know whether Jesse Jones and Alfred Finn thought they were building, Tutlike, for all eternity. But on this particular block, even their palace of splendor didn't last 50 years.